Hello all!
I am looking for a $1,600 gaming laptop! I am a computer science major and I will be looking to do some video editing, recording video games, and general programming. I don't need a top of the line graphics card but I would like at least 8 GBs of ram. I would like the laptop to be thin as I will be using this is a university/college laptop. So the lighter the better! I would appreciate any help anybody has to offer! Thanks!
check out the MSi Ghost series of gaming notebooks, they are thin, light, and run pretty cool. such as this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152589&cm_re=msi_gs70-_-34-152-589-_-Product
This is better and a bit cheaper than MSI
http://www.powernotebooks.com/configure.php?special=1713
But seriously, If you don't have a good desktop already, You could build a powerful gaming desktop with part of this budget and then buy a decent light weight laptop/tablet hybrid to take to classes and the library to work on and do light gaming.
you could even build a small form factor desktop for travel if you were a serious youtuber or something.
you could get this http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fX4MTW and a 500$ laptop.
Hmmmm not like I asked specifically for a laptop...
Did you make a decision yet? I'm curious what you will go with.
I'm going to go with the MSI. I don't need the very best hardware specs for what I do. I just need something that is light and portable and can also run hardware intensive programs.
That will suit you well then. If you can upgrade the ram, then you might want to go to 16gb for video editting, and perhaps some of your programs... say matlab if you end up using that. and buy yourself a can of air to spray the dust out of the heatsink once a month. Dust buildup is the #1 killer of laptops.
you don't need 16 gigs of ram for Matlab. My laptop with 8 gigs of ram runs matlab no problem. Heavy video editing/special FX programs will use 16 gigs of ram, but other than that 12 gigs of ram is plenty for just about anything. Spraying out the heatsink is a good idea, maybe not every month but every other month would be a good idea.
Technically, Matlab could use more, as could some heavy compiling, or virtual machines (which could be useful for a CS). But I agree, if you realize that you need more than 8 gigs, build a proper desktop workstation.
I agree.. you could build a decent desktop for $900 that would be more powerful than the MSI laptop, then you could spend $700 on a very good light weight laptop that still has good CPU power. But.. the really wants just a laptop.
As far as matlab goes, it really depends on the application of the software.
You could run MATLAB with < 8 GB of memory and never reach maximum memory usage for 90% of MATLAB applications. Unless you're using it for crazy simulations, video analysis or something specialist, memory is not an important thing to consider. Your processor will have more of an impact on MATLAB's performance.